I'm a Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science, and Biostatistics in the Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins University's School of Medicine. From 2005-2011 I was the Horvitz Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Before joining UMD, I was at The Institute for Genomic Research, where I sequenced the genomes of many bacteria, including those used in the 2001 anthrax attacks. At TIGR I was part of the Human Genome Project and the co-founder of the influenza virus sequencing project (which is when I first learned of the anti-vaccine movement). My research group develops software for DNA sequence analysis, and our (free) software is used by scientific laboratories around the globe. I did my B.A. and M.S. at Yale University, and my Ph.D. at Harvard University, and I have published over 200 scientific papers. Follow me on Facebook or Twitter (@stevensalzberg1), or just subscribe to my alternate blog, http://genome.fieldofscience.com.

Stem Cells Show Promise For Repairing Damaged Hearts

There was some very good news from the world of medicine just a couple of weeks ago. For the first time, stem cells were injected into the hearts of humans who had suffered serious heart damage, and patients improved dramatically. It appears that, as everyone hoped, the stem cells grew into new heart cells to replaced the damaged tissue. This is the promise of all stem cell research: to repair or replace damaged organs that otherwise would never recover. In principle, we can someday use the same technique to replace damaged livers, kidneys, spinal cords, cartilege, and virtually all other tissues in the human body.

In the new study, just published in The Lancet, a group of researchers led by Robert Bolli grew stem cells from patients’ own hearts, after the patients had suffered serious heart attacks, leaving their hearts permanently damaged. Bolli explained to CNN reporter Caleb Hellerman:

“Once you reach this stage of heart disease, you don’t get better. You can go down slowly, or go down quickly, but you’re going to go down.”

And yet, in this study, they did not “go down.” Instead, they got better. Bolli and colleagues collected a small amount of tissue from each patient’s own heart, and purified stem cells from that tissue. By using the patient’s own cells, there is no danger of rejection as there would be with cells from an unrelated donor.

They measured the patients’ heart function by how much blood was being pumpled through the left ventricle. The patients had an average Left Ventricular Ejection Fraction (LVEF) of 30.3% at the beginning of the study, an indication of very severe heart disease. Four months later, the 16 patients who received the stem cells had an average LVEF of 38.5%, while patients in the control group (who didn’t get the stem cells) showed no change. Even more dramatically, after one year the patients LVEF had improved further, to 42.5%.

Thus, remarkably, the cardiac stem cells seem to have “taken” in these patients, growing back into healthy cardiac cells in these severely ill patients. The researchers used MRI to measure the damaged heart tissue in 7 of their patients, and found that it had actually decreased by 30% after one year. In a companion trial at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles, Dr. Eduardo Marbán reported similarly positive results. Marbán told CNN’s Hellerman that the patients grew approximately 600 million new heart cells after the procedure, comparable to the number of cells that die in a serious heart attack.

One reason these findings are especially dramatic is that they show convincingly that the human heart contains stem cells that can re-grow into new heart cells. It is entirely possible that heart damage that has always been thought to be irreversible can be completely repaired – someday.

The results are very preliminary, and only a few patients have been treated so far, but this is a major triumph for stem cell research. The research in question used adult stem cells, but embryonic stem cells may prove even more effective, and may be easier to obtain because they don’t have to come directly from someone’s heart.* Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S., and we should be pursuing every avenue that offers hope for better treatments, especially this very promising new direction. Those who oppose stem cell research – including embryonic stem cell research – should wake up and take notice: many lives are at stake.

*Disclaimer: Until June 2011, I was a member of the Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission, a state commission established by the legislature and the governor to promote human stem cell research through state-funded grants. The views expressed here, as always, are my own, and do not represent the Commission.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

Comments

It’s not off-topic, but it’s a lengthy digression that I didn’t want to delve into. Briefly: getting stem cells directly from the heart is difficult and requires an invasive procedure. (That’s a 2nd procedure – first to harvest the cells, and second to inject them after growing them outside the body.) If we could coax ESCs into becoming cardiac stem cells, then we could use those instead. To figure out how to do this, we need more research on ESCs.

The way it was worded suggested opposition to stem cell research in general which, as far as I know, has never been an issue. You came dangerously close to climbing on your soap box during the last paragraph. I found it somewhat disorienting. A compelling article, nevertheless.

The beauty of this is that these stem cells are yours and not some fetal stem cell, so what’s the objection? None. Just plain good news. Yes, every bright spot involves some dark. But, if harvesting your own cells has worked to date, then the risk is probably no greater and the results far greater and brighter than the drugs which always have a downside and usually without a brighter and healthier future.

So rather thatn continuing with research that has yielded promising results, scientist should start over with ESC? No ESC therapy tried to date has worked while adult stem cell therapies are making people well now. Why are you so intent on finding a way to use human embryos as a spare parts source that you would ignore that fact?

The problem is that ESCs are foreign tissue and present a high risk of rejection by the patient’s body. This would require anti-rejection drugs which themselves can have horrible side-effects. Autologous Stem Cells are, ethical issues aside, a much more viable long-term option for such procedures.

If there are other types of stem cells that can be “harvested” without running into the ethical and moral debate surrounding embryonic stem cells, then we should spend our time and energy using those methods first.

I have gone through your research article regarding development of new stem cells growth to revive the Ventricular Ejection Fraction (LVEF) of the heart. I am a heart patient (58 yrs old), having LVEF of approx 27% – 33%. I had the heart attack in the year May 1996 and continuously taking medicines under the expert advice of cardiologist Dr Ashok Seth working at Fortis Escorts in India.

I wonder whether it is possible to undergo the treatment of new stems cells revival procedure under your guidance as a research patient?

Granted, this is from a layman’s perspective, so I may be off the wall with this, but, in cases where the patient is genetically predisposed to heart disease, wouldn’t these stem cells carry the same faulty gene, thus resulting in the same problem recurring, perhaps in the not too distant future?

How much is 10 years of life worth to you? I guess that’s the question here. If it begins to heal, sure it may begin to degrade again later in life (just as it did the first time around), but it will (in theory) prolong your life, right?

In reading this article, the cells are “purified” which makes them useful and not just taken and injected. This makes sense scientifically, if not easily understood by everyone. When something is purified, you get the good, not the bad.